Apollo was the son of Zeus and Leto, and the twin brother of the chaste huntress Artemis, who took the place of Selene as goddess of the moon.

Apollo's role as the slayer of the Python led to his association with battle and victory; hence it became the Roman custom for a paean to be sung by an army on the march and before entering into battle, when a fleet left the harbour, and also after a victory had been won.

Apollo was attributed the epithet Musagetes as the leader of the muses, and Nymphegetes as "nymph-leader".

Since it was not carrying a lunar module, Apollo7 could be launched with the Saturn IB booster rather than the much larger and more powerful Saturn V.

For nearly 30 years the Apollo7 module was on loan (renewable every two years) to the National Museum of Science and Technology of Canada, in Ottawa, along with the space suit worn by Wally Schirra.

Apollo7 was the only manned Apollo launch to take place from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station's Launch Complex 34, as all subsequent Apollo (including Apollo-Soyuz) and Skylab missions were launched from Launch Complex 39 at the nearby Kennedy Space Center.

Walter J. Kapryan of the MSC Resident ASPO at KSC told the KSC Apollo Program Manager that one of the primary test objectives of the SM-102 static-fire test was to determine system deterioration caused by the static-fire sequence and exposure to residual hypergolics trapped in the system during subsequent prelaunch operations.

Apollo Program Director Samuel C. Phillips wrote to his two principal counterparts at MSFC and MSC, Lee B. James and George M. Low, to express his concern that the launch-release wind constraint for the Saturn IB, currently 45 kilometers, was perhaps the most restrictive of all such constraints.

At the November 10 Apollo Executive meeting Phillips presented a summary of the activities; James gave the launch vehicle status; Low reported on the spacecraft status and said he was impressed with the way KSC had handled its tight checkout schedule; Slayton reported on the flight plan; and Petrone on checkout readiness.

The crew decided the Roman numeral XI would not be understood in some nations and went with Apollo 11; they decided not to put their names on the patch to "allow it to symbolize everyone who worked on the moon landing".

It was the fifth human spaceflight of the Apollo program, and the third human voyage to the moon.

The Saturn V carrying Apollo 11 took several seconds to clear the tower on July 16, 1969.

In addition to fulfilling President John F. Kennedy's mandate to land a man on the Moon before the end of the 1960s, Apollo 11 was an engineering test of the Apollo system; therefore, Armstrong snapped photos of the LM so engineers would be able to judge its post-landing condition.

The crews of Gemini 5 and 7 spent eight and fourteen days in space, respectively and, although they had far less elbow room than the Apollo crews, they proved beyond any doubt that there were no physiological or operational barriers to the conduct of a ten-day lunar mission.

The Apollo team did its best to make sure that equipment and procedures would work the first time they were tried in flight; and the successes of the unmanned test series and of Apollo7 and Apollo 8 continued unabated into the final year of the decade.

The crew of Apollo 9 demonstrated the readiness of all of the major components of Apollo; however, the margins for error in the first landing mission were very tight and, once again, it was a weight problem with the LM that forced a change of plans.

And while Apollo7 might not have matched Apollo 11 or 13 for sheer drama, the crew of Wally Schirra, Walt Cunningham, and Donn Eisele had a lot on its hands.

Apollo7 was the first manned launch in the lunar landing program, essentially an engineering shakedown flight.

Since Apollo7 would test the Command and Service Module in Earth orbit (not carrying the LM), and was also the first manned launch of a Saturn I-B rocket, this is the book to have for information on the CSM and booster.

Apollo's flotation bags had their first try-out when the spacecraft, a "lousy boat," splashed down in the Atlantic southeast of Bermuda, less than two kilometers from the planned impact point.

Apollo7 accomplished what it set out to do- qualifying the command and service module and clearing the way for the proposed lunar-orbit mission to follow.

The Apollo7 astronauts went through six days of debriefing for the benefit of Apollo 8, and on October 28 the Manned Space Flight Management Council chaired by Mueller met at MSC, investigating every phase of the forthcoming mission.